1. Gucci Skrilla: J. Markowitz, D. Nelson, G. Evans, G. Russell
Previously an underrated team, this year, Markowitz’s outside shooting, Nelson’s driving ability, and Evans’ inside presence have earned them the #1 seed. Russell can provide moral support from the side.

2. diVarsity: C. Honican, Daeshon. Hall, C. Bui, J. Gibson
Look for big things when varsity standout DaeDae Hall and last year’s Cinderella story Chandler Honican work together.

3. L.O.E.: D. Newton, M. Myres, G. Williams
Despite Juanie’s extensive experience in the tournament, he won’t get far unless he can get some support from his fellow Loyalty-ians.

4. “I just got schooled by my teacher”: Mr. Berkenwald, Mr. Hagopian, Mr. O’Neill, Mr. Collier
With the championship-winning staff team from last year dissolved, This team will have the hopes of the entire Garfield faculty resting on their educational shoulders.

5. Soccer Sloos: J. White, A. Kovar, B. Feldman, S. Renehan, L. Gemperline
This team has plenty of athleticism, but very little actual basketball experience. They might win a game or two, but their soccer abilities won’t do much against people who actually play basketball.

6. Clutch: K. Chen, E. Dorland, B. Jimmerson
This team is made up of athletes who all play Garfield varsity sports other than basketball. If they can get comfortable with a different type of balls in their hands, they should do reasonably well.

7. Street CHAL(J)ers: A. Cole, L. McFeely, J. Renner, H. Droege, C. Browne
Rhyming the word ‘chal’ with the word ‘ball’ yet again, and again forgetting that the letter ‘J’ is never silent in the English language, this team could potentially upset a favored team or two if they can learn how to spell.

8. Fris Bros: E. Barley-Greenfield, P. Finney, J. Coughlin, C. Eckert
I don’t really know what they’re name means. Coughlin is tall, and apparently Finney is pretty athletic, but I don’t think any of them can dunk, and unless one of them poisons every single higher seed, this team probably won’t advance far.

9. The 206ers: H. Aalfs, M. Evans, A. Loud, C. Foucault, T. Fenbert
Yet another team full of decently athletic sophomore boys with questionable basketball skills. None of them are particularly tall, and unless some of them have some surprise ball skills, they’ll have to wait another year or two before they get to run with the big dogs.

10. Nord Horde: J. Dunnington, P. Minor, Z. Ward, N. Johnston
This time has size and debatable athleticism, which might just be the only things that can save them from a first-round loss. They’re also all blonde, which will likely hamper their ability to think coherently.

11. Belieberzzz: R. Keyser, A. Kilgore, C. Palmer, K. Trettenero, S. Hoffman
This team has possibly the worst name in the tournament. And while a couple of the girls might actually be able to play basketball, they’ll have a tough time going up against anybody with size and experience (or just passable taste in music)

12. QA Dynasty: N. Franko, P. Franko, L. Evans, M. Evans, W. Luna
This team consists of two pairs of brothers and then Will Luna, and doesn’t seem to have much going for them other than that they live in Queen Anne. Unless they have a secret weapon up their sleeve, don’t look for more than one win from this team

13. Team ####s On The Table: A. Moshcatel, M. Kee, G. Glover, W. Godbe
This team has one of the more colorful names in the tournament, which out of necessity we are not allowed to print. Ask them about it if you want. They also probably won’t win more than a game.

14. The Biggest Mess: E. Baker, H. Collins, J. Lin, B. Dearing
This team could well be the worst team in the tournament. Led by Jenny “What’s a Rebound?” Lin, they probably won’t make a single basket.

Since 1620, squash popularity has exploded. Presidents Washington and Jefferson BOTH grew squash in their gardens; Obama* identifies squash as “an American staple-no, pastime”.

Alas, owning squash is widely regarded as taboo. Since the dawn of squash cultivation a gang of alien pirate rebels, the Galactic Gourd Squad, have been vaporizing every squash grower in sight. Beware the Galactic Gourd Squad!!

“There’s no milk in squash!” says senior Jake Alhadeff.In fact, Jake loves squash so much that he attempted a raid on a squash field, during which he was paralyzed from the menorah down by police. Keep Jake in your prayers.

*Name has been changed

The process began years ago, when leading members of the governing body for soccer in Seattle, the Seattle Youth Soccer Association (SYSA), grew  dissatisfied with the state of select soccer in the region. The system in place until last year featured Emerald City (ECFC) as the only large organization in the Seattle area sponsoring premier teams, while all the players interested in select who didn’t make either of the two ECFC teams for each age group were forced to play for any a number of smaller, independent teams.

This system fostered a number of problems. The biggest problem was that the competition between Emerald City and the other Seattle area teams ended up hurting everybody. Teams would steal players away from other teams, there was political fighting between different organizations, and the general atmosphere was one of bitter rivalry and resentment. On top of that, the system prevented kids who wanted to play select but couldn’t afford the time or monetary commitment from playing. And the large number of select teams in Seattle dispersed the talent across a number of different teams, so that few Seattle teams were competing with the top teams in state, despite the abundance of talent in the Seattle area.

In 2004, SYSA began to formulate a proposal to restructure select soccer, and in November 2008, launched the Seattle United Project. The overall goal of the project was to unite all of the select soccer teams in Seattle into one organization, and on July 9th, SYSA approved the formation of Seattle United FC.

Seattle United consists of two different levels of teams. There are two premier teams for each gender at every age group from U-11 to U-18, similar to ECFC. But Seattle United also features an extensive program operating below the premier level. The entire Seattle area is divided up into four regions–Northeast, West, South and North. These regions contain as many teams as there are players who want to play, and consist of two levels of select teams; classic select, the more traditional select teams featuring paid coaches, year-round seasons, and extensive team fees– and community select, where coaches are volunteers, seasons can be year-round or half-year long, and kids can just have fun.

The goal of Seattle United, according to Dave Richardson, a member of the policy making board, and the current director of the South region, is to “create a culture of inclusion, not exclusion.”

Richardson’s main goal, as he puts it, is to “bring select soccer to the kids who wouldn’t normally be playing.”

Seattle United is designed so that anybody that wants to play select soccer can play, featuring regional teams, varying levels of commitment, and an extensive scholarship program. They devote six percent of their entire revenue to their scholarship fund, which is predicted to be about $85,000 for the coming year. Cutoffs for scholarships operate on the same level as the Seattle School District lunch policy: If you get free lunch, you get free soccer. The entire team fee is also paid for students who don’t attend SSD schools, but still meet the same fiscal requirements.

In order to make Seattle United the umbrella organization for all select soccer in Seattle, SYSA issued a mandate the same time they approved the formation of the club. The mandate stated that all select soccer teams from U-11 to U-14 would be required to join Seattle United, while all the select teams from U-15 to U-18 would be left alone, still with the option of joining Seattle United. The idea was to phase out the older teams, and to make Seattle United the only select club in Seattle within four years.

But Emerald City felt that SYSA didn’t have the right to shut down all their teams U-14 and below. After SYSA issued them a mandate threatening to suspend all their teams if they fielded a team U-14 or under, they appealed their case to the Washington State Youth Soccer Association (WSYSA). Upon losing their case there, they again appealed their case to the United States Soccer Federation headquarters in Chicago. The USSF refused to hear their case, and early this year, sick of the extended legal proceedings, SYSA suspended all ECFC teams for a year.

In effect, this prevents any Emerald City teams from playing in WSYSA leagues or tournaments, namely all the select leagues, including the Player Development League (PDL), as well as all state tournaments. In the meantime, WSYSA is restructuring the PDL itself, which will soon become the Regional Club League (RCL). Once the RCL is fully formed, Seattle United will almost certainly be admitted, while Emerald City will still be prevented from playing for a year. But as of right now, Seattle United has not been accepted into the PDL.

Emerald City’s inability to play in the Washington Select Leagues has created a tricky situation for those ECFC players over the U-14 cutoff. All of the Emerald City teams except for the Boys U-17 teams have joined Seattle United, but many players opted not to join with Seattle United, choosing instead to join other select teams in nearby regions.

Some, like Garfield junior Rachel Keyser, who played for ECFC for six years, and was a player representative on the ECFC board of directors as well as a member of the Seattle United formation committee, don’t feel sympathetic towards Emerald City. Keyser left Emerald City because of “dismal coaching, and a lack of any attempt to improve it by the club.”

Says Keyser, “If they had just joined Seattle United, they would still exist, just under a different name.”

But others, like senior Lily Hansen, who played for Emerald City for four years, feels that Seattle United is hurting select soccer. Hansen chose to play for Eastside FC instead of Seattle United after her Emerald City team disbanded. “[Seattle United] will divide the talent in Seattle, turning one decent club into two competing teams, which eventually will lead to two clubs that I think will be mediocre,” says Hansen. “Anyone talented enough will end up moving to the suburbs to play for either Crossfire or Eastside.”

The one thing that’s for sure is that next year all select teams U-14 and younger will operate under the Seattle United umbrella. What remains to be seen is how effective the organization will be in improving the quality of select soccer in Seattle.

But Audrey Sheffield, mother of two Garfield daughters, one of whom plays for an Emerald City team above the cutoff, and the other whom plays for an independent team also above the cutoff, feels it will benefit the level of play in Seattle in the end.

“[It will] offer a more comprehensive, full service approach to select soccer under one umbrella… giving players in Seattle a range of choices in playing.”
In the end, only time will tell. But in the meantime, there will be a noticeable decline in the number of green and white jerseys on Seattle’s soccer fields this summer.

As the deer, or saber-toothed tiger, or whatever they were hunting approached, a basic instinct would kick in. When males find themselves in tense or stressful situations, adrenaline and testosterone start pumping through their veins, making them more alert, agressive, and hyper-emotional. During the hunt, this instinct would come in handy, as the male hunter would have to bash some poor little forest creature in the head with a club.

But in modern times, when most of the male population doesn’t need to go out foraging for its food, these same emotional instincts still kick in as the necessary situations arise, and they’ve found a new outlet; contact sports. Whereas our neolithic predecessors used to actually need the testosterone pumping through their veins in order to kill something to eat, what used to be an evolutionary necessity has become an emotional liability. Instead of beating the crap out of a tiger or a bear or something, guys end up getting heated on the basketball court, and beating the crap out of each other.

This can be fairly entertaining in a lot of situations. Sports fights are usually way more fun to watch than the actual sports games. Nobody likes Ron Artest, but he’s become a national celebrity mostly because he’s so good at starting fights (and at punching the wrong guys). Every time a pitcher throws one high and inside, everybody is secretly praying for the batter to storm the mound and start a bench-clearing brawl. There are multiple sports that don’t even involve balls, goals or rules, just guys beating each other up in a variety of ways.

But these fights are between professional athletes. They only interact with each other in an athletic setting, and most of the time they hate each other. The instinct to fight is natural; they’re competing with their rivals, emotions run wild, and as soon as somebody throws an elbow, or lays them out, or comes within inches of hitting them in the head with a fastball, territorial instinct kicks in, and the natural response is to clock their opponent in the face.

When this instinct becomes problematic is when the situation changes. It’s one thing when two professional athletes get mad at each other during an intense, close, nationally-televised game, but two friends getting mad at each other while they’re just shooting around is completely different. Sports are supposed to be fun, but the contact sports are also known as contact sports for a reason. Of course people are gonna get fouled when playing basketball. That’s a part of the game. Nobody should take it personally and start getting pissed about it.

This was especially visible during the March Madness tournament. Kids who have known each other for years were getting mad to the point of almost fighting over stupid fouls during a three on three game. No one’s life depends on winning the game. No one’s gonna get recruited by colleges if they win the game. No one’s gonna make any more money, or become more successful in life if they win the game. The point of the tournament is to have fun. The only thing anybody’s putting on the line is pride. There’s absolutely no reason to get upset about anything that happens in the game. Nobody should be letting what happens in the tournament ruin their day, and it definitely shouldn’t be causing beef between people who used to be friends.

We need to learn to suppress that primal instinct to get heated when we’re just messing around. People play sports because they’re fun, but the game stops being fun when somebody overreacts and starts getting angry. We all need to stop getting so mad over stupid stuff that happens in meaningless games, and just chill. We aren’t cavemen anymore.

But senior Michael Cunetta sees things a little differently. Cunetta has been running both track and cross country since freshman year, and loved every bit of it.

He started running cross country freshman year to get in shape for the school baseball season, but ended up liking cross country a lot more than he thought. He then decided to forego baseball and run track instead, and has never looked back.

Things really started heating up for Cunetta in his junior year. For the first time in almost a decade, the cross country team made it from KingCo to bi-districts. Cunetta placed 25th at KingCo, and 24th at bi-districts, but missed going to state by just eight seconds.

Following his near run at state in junior year, Cunetta decided to run the Seattle Marathon with fellow cross country runner Dylan Petersen. He placed tenth in the under-21 category, running the entire 26.2 miles in 3 hours, 25 minutes, and 40 seconds. Cunetta says,

“That was the most physically challenging thing I’ve done in my life.”

During the track season that year, Cunetta shaved his 1600m (1 mile) time down to just 4:40, but again just missed the cutoff to advance, this time missing going to KingCo by about five seconds.

He fared better in the 3200m, however, running two miles in 9:58, qualifying him for KingCo. At KingCo he ran a 10:03, finishing 11th overall, but again missing state.

This fall, the cross country team really stepped it up a notch, qualifying for state as a team for the first time since 1995. Cunetta placed 10th at KingCo, and 9th at bi-districts, and was looking to make it into the top 40 runners at state. He did just that, coming in 40th place with a time of 16:15.

In the coming track season, Cunetta looks to cut his mile time down to 4:30, and run the 2 mile in 9:40, but after that he’s unsure. He’ll be attending a small, unprestigious school known as Yale University come next fall, but he’s not sure if he’ll continue running.

“The coach said I would have a spot on the team if I wanted to walk on,” he says, “but I’m afraid that [running on a Division 1 team] would be too much of a commitment given the amount of schoolwork I’m going to have at Yale.”

He says it’ll be hard to quit though, so he might very well continue to run at a college varsity level.

Either way, his shoes will be hard to fill on the Garfield teams, but he has some words of encouragement for prospective runners.

“A lot of people don’t understand running because it’s hard for them… The truth is, if you just get out there and do it a lot, it becomes way easier.”

And for those, like myself, who aren’t so fond of running, Cunetta has a startlingly similar opinion.

“Running itself isn’t that much fun. What makes [running on a team] fun is that everyone is suffering together.”

But for those who can’t Block that well, a more regulated alternative has become popular. Yes, I’m talking about actually learning to box.

Freshman Jessica Markowitz began boxing in the middle of eighth grade. She’s been going to Cappy’s Boxing Gym on 23rd and Union for about a year now, and has a routine worked out.

After working on her combinations, she then moves to either sparring or conditioning, which generally consists of crunches, push ups, lifting weights, or using medicine balls.

In other words, the girl is serious. My money’s on her for purple and white festivities.

Junior Paloma Contreras goes to a friendlier-sounding gym—Bumblebee Boxing Club.

Whereas Cappy’s Boxing Gym sounds like a big, scary guy who could pound me into a pulp, Bumblebee Boxing gym, located on Martin Luther King and Othello, sounds like a happy place, and boasts a regular circulation of about 40 members, with generally anywhere from 10 to 30 members there each day.

Workouts start with a half hour run on the treadmills, or a 4 mile run outside (depending on how in shape the person is). From there the workout moves on to jumping jacks (sometimes for 10 minutes), lunges, crunches, sit ups, and neck rolls.

Contreras, however, has yet to spar with anybody.

“Some of the guys in there are really big and I don’t want to get the sh*t beat out of me.”

Contreras sees boxing as a less time-consuming commitment than rowing, which she had been involved with for years.

After a family friend who was a boxing trainer encouraged her to try it, she began in January, and has been at it ever since.

She says she enjoys it, and plans to keep at it, at least for a while.

Could this be a new trend? Or is it just two girls who both happen to box?

Only time will tell, but I know one thing—spring has finally made its entrance, and I’m sure there will be more spur-of-the-moment boxing matches to accompany the nice weather. And those who are seasoned professionals may just have the upper hand.

But especially after the recent US Hockey Teams adventures, I’ve come to realize that it’s good for the US to be the underdog. We’re used to being the dominant power in everything. We have by far the biggest economy and the biggest military. Between Hollywood and MTV, we basically control the pop culture of the entire world. And the NBA, NFL, and MLB are all by far the most important leagues in their respective sports in the entire world.

It’s become almost an American tradition to be the biggest and the best in everything we do, and as the Olympics have shown us—sports are no different. It’s really pretty embarrassing whenever the US Men’s Olympic basketball team, comprised of easily the most talented basketball players in the world, doesn’t win gold. Baseball is basically the same, and if football were an Olympic sport, I’m sure we would completely dominate that as well.

I think that’s part of the reason why the US hockey team’s first win over Canada was such a big deal. They weren’t expected to win. They were definitely one of the better teams in the competition, but they were still clearly the underdogs going into the game.

It’s the excitement of the upset that makes sports so much fun, and it was the excitement of upsetting the best hockey team in the world that drew so much attention. I hadn’t been paying much attention to hockey, but after the US won, I hopped on the bandwagon like everybody else. Being the underdog that could beat the big powerhouses is the real American spirit, and that’s why seeing the hockey team win a non-medal game was so much more satisfying than seeing Shawn White destroy everybody on the way to a gold medal.

I think that’s part of the appeal of soccer. The US isn’t the best. Seeing the US beat Spain in the Confederations Cup was one of the most exciting sports moments of the summer for me, and it was 100 percent because of the fact that nobody expected the US to beat the number one ranked team in the world. The whole Disney-esque

Cell Phones
By far the funniest cell phone commerical was the Motorola Megan Fox ad. And to make things even better, she’s not wearing any clothes the whole thing. I don’t even remember if there were any other cell phone commercials but this was one of the few ads during the entire game that I could actually pay attention to for all 30 seconds.

Food
The McDonalds commercial with Dwight Howard and LeBron James’ wins this category. It was decently funny, but the dunks were also just filthy (even though they probably weren’t real). Honorable mention goes to Coke for their African Safari commercial, although Coke loses points for its stupid Simpsons commercial.

Beer
An absolute disappointment from the beer companies. Normally the funniest out of all the commercials, we were stuck watching stupid Lost parodies and T-Pain references. Bud Light wins the category, but only for their Book Club commercial where the girl asks the guy if he likes Little Women and he says “I’m not picky.” No honorable mentions because just about all the rest were terrible

Car
The Audi Green Police ad was the funniest, although it was really more of an environment ad than a car ad. Honorable Mentions go to the Volkswagen SlugBug commercial with Tracy Jordan and Stevie Wonder, and the Brett Favre 2020 MVP Hyundai Sonata commercial, because nobody likes Brett Favre.

Website
Normally I don’t like their stupid baby commercials, but the E-Trade commercials on Sunday were actually pretty funny. Personal favorites were the Milkaholic commercial with the little baby booty call (Milkawhat?) and the Airplane commercial. Honorable mention goes to Monster for the commercial with the beaver violinist.

Overall
Despite disappointments from many sides, this year’s Doritos commercials made up for any poor showings from other companies. The Samurai one and the House Rules one (“keep yo hands off mah momma, keep yo hands off mah Doritos”) were easily the funniest of the whole game, and were definitely my personal favorites. These commercials were by far the high point of the Super Bowl.

But the school district decided to take no action on the subject, citing uncertainty in projected enrollment numbers. Franklin moved down to 3A Metro last year, but only because their enrollment levels were too low for 4A.  The District decided to keep the inner-city schools in KingCo through the 2009–2010 year. League rules require a year’s notification before any cross-conference transfers, so Garfield couldn’t move until the next athletic cycle, which starts in fall of 2012. But it is entirely possible that they will pull us, Ballard and Roosevelt out of KingCo, and combine Metro into a 3A/4A conference. 

This would mean a couple of very significant changes. It would mean that some of our less-than-successful teams might start winning a few games. After all, Garfield’s football team did go undefeated against inner-city schools this past fall. Without having to run up against high schools with genetically mutated, trained-since-they-could-walk super-athletes, the city schools would definitely fare better. Only playing inner-city teams would also supposedly decrease travel costs and missed classroom time, although the School District has yet to release any data confirming this theory. 

On the other hand, the disparity in size between schools like Garfield (enrollment of 1600) and Rainier Beach (enrollment of 360) would probably create even more of an imbalance. And many say that competition between inner-city and suburban schools has helped break down cultural barriers. Being a part of KingCo also gives Garfield’s JV and C teams opponents to compete against, while some schools in Metro are struggling to field a Varsity. And the heightened competition from Eastside schools is a good thing in a lot of ways, providing the stronger Garfield teams with better opponents during the season, giving them increased chances in the postseason.

Either way, no decision will be made for at least a few months, but the question remains; in a conference of Jake Heaps and US National Team soccer players, do we belong?